Amid a crush of recent litigation failures, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission scored a victory on Tuesday against appellate hotshot Eugene Scalia of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, reviving a case that a dissenting judge warned could backfire dramatically on employees.
In a 2-1 opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reinstated the EEOC’s claims that Ford Motor Company discriminated against a disabled employee by refusing to let her work regularly from home, and then fired her after she accused Ford of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. The majority rejected Ford’s arguments that the job in question required a physical presence in the workplace, and it blamed the employee’s performance problems when she did work remotely on Ford’s failure to accommodate her illness.
